WESTON-SUPER-MARE
WESTON-SUPER-MARE has frequently been styled the “Western Brighton.” It
matters little or nothing to those who invent these impossible parallels
that the places thus compared with one another have nothing in common;
and certainly Weston (for few there be who give it the longer name) is
as little like Brighton as any place well can be. Weston fringes the
bold curve of the shallow and sandy Weston or Uphill Bay, sandy inshore:
a mile-broad expanse of mud at low water. Brighton is built on a
straight coastline, part of the town standing on the clifftops of Kemp
Town, and the narrow beach is exclusively shingle. At the back of
Brighton run the treeless chalk hills of the South Downs; behind Weston
stretch the levels that extend further inland as far as Sedgemoor.
Brighton took its rise in the middle Georgian period, about 1780; Weston
remained an insignificant village until the first quarter of the
nineteenth century.
While it is certainly a mistaken compliment to compare the situation of
Weston with that of Brighton, it is, on the other hand, unfair to
Brighton to pretend that, as a town, Weston approaches it, for size or
splendour. But in every respect the places are so wholly dissimilar that
it would be the worst of mistakes to play the one off against the other.
One of the very earliest discoverers of Weston was Mrs. Piozzi, the Mrs.
Thrale of earlier years, friend of Dr. Johnson. Writing hence in 1819,
she mentions the fine qualities of the air: “The breezes here are most
salubrious: no land nearer than North America when we look down the
Channel; and ’tis said that Sebastian Cabot used to stand where I now
sit, and meditate his future discoveries of Newfoundland.”
The reference to “no land nearer than North America,” with the cautious
proviso, “when we look down the Channel,” strikes the modern observer,
who in fine weather distinctly sees the busy towns of the South Wales
coast and the smoke-wreaths of its factory chimneys, not more than ten
miles distant, as particularly quaint. The old county historians have
little to say of Weston, and what they have to remark is concerned only
with the descent of the manor.
Even so comparatively recently as 1824—five years, it will be noted,
later than Mrs. Piozzi’s raptures—Weston remained a very small place, as
shown in an old engraving published at the time in Rutter’s “Westonian
Guide.” It consisted, it would appear, of the parish church of St. John,
just rebuilt, and some thirty houses. A few trees, of a distinctly
Noah’s Ark type, looked upon the sands, occupied by two
bathing-machines, a shed, a horse and cart, and twelve widely
distributed people of uncertain but pensive character. Such was the old
inheritance of the Pigott and Smyth-Pigott family, who have owned the
manor of Weston, with much else in the neighbourhood, since 1696.
But the evidence afforded by the frontispiece to “Rutter’s Guide,” which
shows Weston like some sparse settlement on a desolate shore, does not
tally with the statements contained in the booklet itself, in whose
pages we read:
“The fishermen’s huts have almost disappeared and the town now contains
about two hundred and fifty houses; a large portion of which are
respectable residences,[2] and even some elegant mansions; but
notwithstanding this, its general appearance is little inviting to the
stranger, especially in gloomy weather, or when the ebb of the spring
tides leaves open large tracts of beach. But on a fine summer evening,
when the tide is in, nothing can be more beautiful than the scene which
it presents: numerous groups walking on its smooth and extensive sands,
intermingled with a variety of carriages, horses, fishermen wading with
nets, and the villagers enjoying the exhilarating breeze after the
fatigues of the day.”
Footnote 2:
This is good hearing.
The seaside was at that time in process of being discovered. At
innumerable spots around our coasts fisher villages were then being
transformed into elegant resorts, which were saved from becoming vulgar
by the sufficient facts that the working classes could not afford
holidays, and that, if they could, the means of transport were lacking.
When tedious and expensive coach journeys were the only methods of being
conveyed, it is obvious that wage-earners could spare neither the time
nor the money for what would have been to them, under the most
favourable circumstances, an enterprise. But those classes were quite
content to do without the week’s or fortnight’s holiday at the seaside
which appears nowadays to be regarded as the birthright of most men,
women, and children. They were not then educated up to holidays, and
were content to work week in and week out through the year, never
questioning the scheme of things that gave to the few that leisure they
themselves could never enjoy.
It is a little difficult nowadays to realise the exclusive Weston that
was; although, to be sure, those days when it still posed as exclusive
are not so far distant but that many old people in the town can
recollect them perfectly well.
The beginning of the end of this old-time attitude of aloofness may be
dated from 1841, when the Bristol and Exeter Railway that was—the Great
Western that is—was opened to Worle, in continuation of the line from
Paddington to Bristol; being completed the whole way to Exeter in 1844.
The early history of railways is not yet ancient history, but it is
already old enough to be obscured and made romantic by legends, some
true, others coloured with that passion for the picturesque which
transfigures history everywhere. Stories are told, as they are told
everywhere, with a great deal of truth in them, of local objections to
the railway. We hear of the passionate opposition offered by the
Smyth-Pigotts and by the inhabitants of Weston to a proposal to run the
main line near the town; with the result that it was constructed no
closer than a mile away inland. The two thousand inhabitants who then
constituted the town of Weston shortsightedly rejoiced at this victory,
which was very speedily found to be a costly one; the branch tramway
laid down from the main line, with railway carriages dragged slowly into
the place, to a shed situated in the rear of the present Town Hall,
proving an undignified entrance that not many visitors cared to
experience twice. But for ten years this remained the way into the town
by rail. A proper branch line was afterwards built from Worle, but still
Weston station remained a terminus, until the new loop line was made, in
1884, coming through the town and rejoining the main at Uphill and
Bleadon station.
Another local railway legend, of some interest, relates to a forlorn
platform that no living person ever saw put to any manner of use. It
stood some distance to the north side of the existing station for Uphill
and Bleadon, and was popularly supposed to be a station erected by the
Company in accordance with the letter (certainly not with the spirit) of
an agreement entered into between the Company and a local landowner
through whose land the railway had been made, at an extravagant cost, in
consequence of the high price this freeholder had put upon his holding.
He, it appears, finally insisted upon having a station built for his own
personal convenience, and the Company agreed. But nothing had been said
about trains stopping there, and so no tickets were ever issued to or
from this freak building, and no trains ever halted at it.
Nowadays with its twenty-five thousand inhabitants, Weston welcomes,
instead of repelling, the visitor. Nay, more: it has arrived at that
stage of existence to which most other seaside towns have come, and
lives for and on visitors, and when the summer season is over ceases to
be its characteristic self; always remembering that in winter its
climate is mild and inviting to invalids.
It has long been the fashion in many quarters to depreciate
Weston-super-Mare, and to style it “Weston-super-Mud.” Mud there is in
plenty, far out in this shallow bay, and it is exposed for a great
distance at the ebb, but it never intermingles with the fine broad
yellow sands that form a paradise for children along the entire two
miles’ sweep of the bay, from Anchor Head to Uphill, and make a fine
track for the donkey rides that are so great a feature of the children’s
holidays here. The scenery surrounding Weston is delightful and
singularly romantic. Boldly placed in mid-Channel are those twin, but
strongly dissimilar islets, the Steep Holm and Flat Holm, the last-named
provided with a prominent white lighthouse, and both in these latter
days the site of massive forts presenting an embattled front to any
possible hostile voyage up the Severn Sea. These islets are outlying
fragments of the Mendip range of hills, which ends south of the town in
the quarried hills of Bleadon and Uphill, and in the almost islanded
gigantic bulk of Brean Down. Overhanging the town on the north is that
other outlier of the Mendips, Worle Hill. In every direction, therefore,
we find hills peaking up with a suddenness and an outline almost
volcanic in appearance. The air, too, of Weston is brisk and enjoyable;
and if there be indeed nothing of interest in the town itself, modern
creation as it is, the same criticism is applicable to many another
seaside resort. The stranger, therefore, who has for many years been
familiar with severe and undiscriminating criticisms of Weston finds it,
when at last fate brings him hither, a very much more likeable place
than he had dared hope.
It must, however, be said that Weston is not select. It is popular, in
the sense that Yarmouth, Blackpool, and Southport (to name none others)
are popular. It caters of necessity for the crowd, for the crowd is at
its very threshold. Half an hour’s railway journey from Bristol, and a
mere ten miles’ steamer voyage from Cardiff and other populous Welsh
ports, would render useless any attempts that might be made to keep
Weston as a preserve for the comparatively few rich, leisured, and
cultured persons who might give its Parade a better tone, but certainly
would not do the shopkeeping class much good. And to do the people and
the local authorities of Weston the merest justice, they make no such
attempts, foredoomed to failure as they would be. I do not know what the
motto of Weston-super-Mare may be, nor even indeed if it has one. If not
already furnished in this respect, it might well be “Let ’em all come.”
And they do already come in very considerable numbers. But this, it
should be said, is not to pretend that Weston is either so large, or so
besieged with immense crowds of visitors, as Blackpool and the other
popular resorts already mentioned. Still the streets, the long curving
Parade, and the sands are in July, August, and September as densely
crowded as any lover of humanity in masses could reasonably desire, and
the place is as fully furnished with strictly unintellectual amusements
as the average lower middle-class holiday-maker could hope for, outside
Blackpool and Yarmouth. Here is a pier, the “Grand Pier” it is called,
thrusting forth a long arm from the centre of the Parade into the
shallow waters of the bay, with a huge concert pavilion midway, and a
further lengthy arm going on and on until it rivals Southend pier
itself, with a total length of 6,600 feet, or something like a mile and
a quarter; the intention being to enable the excursion steamers to touch
at the pier-head. An electric railway runs the length of this prodigious
affair, which entirely eclipses the old Birnbeck Pier under Anchor Head:
really a pier-like bridge connecting the rocky isle of Birnbeck with the
mainland. From the isle itself three pier-arms project in different
directions, and to these the excursion steamers from Bristol, Cardiff
and other ports have hitherto come. Such dreams of delight await the
incoming visitors on this siren isle that many day-excursionists to
Weston proceed no farther. The place abounds with every kind of
amusement, except the intellectual variety: water-chutes, switchback
railways, try-your-weight and try-your-strength machines, and battalions
of other penny-in-the-slot mechanisms; and, above all, a damned
something that may be espied from the shore, like a huge giant’s-stride
pole with baskets whizzing in dizzy fashion around it; the said baskets
being filled with people who have paid a penny each for the privilege of
being given a sensation which must be a colourable imitation of
sea-sickness. The channel called the Stepway, which separates Birnbeck
from Anchor Head at high tide, is readily crossed at low water; but the
place has its hidden dangers, in a very swift current that sweeps
suddenly through when the tide again begins to flow; as may be seen by
personal observation, and in the evidence offered by a tablet in
Clevedon church, which records the deaths in 1819 by drowning of Abraham
and Charles Elton, two sons of Sir Abraham Elton, who at the ages of
thirteen and fourteen were thus cut off: “In crossing from Bearnbeck
Isle, at Weston-super-Mare, the younger became involved in the tide,
when the elder plunged to his rescue. The flood was stronger than their
strength, though not their love, and as ‘they were lovely and pleasant
in their lives,’ so ‘in their death they were not divided.’”
Midway between Birnbeck and the Grand Pier is a projecting rock, once an
island called Knightstone, now connected with the shore and made the
site of the Knightstone Pavilion and Baths.
Add to these varied delights the presence of hundreds of itinerant
vendors on Parade and sands, and barrows innumerable in the busy
streets; and throw in a very plentiful supply of teashops, restaurants,
and dining-rooms in the centre of the town, whose proprietors or their
agents stand on the pavement and shout for custom, and you will have a
very fair notion of what Weston is like. To these items, however, must
be added Grove Park, with its mansion, the old manor-house of the
Smyth-Pigotts, and, the Clarence Park, and one other. Finally, conceive
that indispensable feature of a modern watering-place, an electric
tramway, and there you have Weston-super-Mare.
Everything is very new, and probably the one ancient object is the
chancel of the parish church, which seems to have escaped rebuilding,
but is not, at any rate, of much interest. In the church is the
following curious epitaph:
Of two brothers born together,
Cruel death was so unkind
As to bring the eldest hither,
And the younger leave behind.
May George live long,
Edgar dy’d young,
For born he was
To Master Sam Willan, Rectour
of this place, and Jane his wife,
Sep. 5, 1680, and buryed Feb.
the eleventh, 1686. The 9th
did put an end to all his pain,
And sent him into everlasting gain.
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